Perfecting minimalist travel - How I Pack Light

Stop agonising over packing and you'll be this happy. That's a fact.

In both daily life and travel, I pretty much try and keep a capsule wardrobe - I create uniforms for myself so I don't have to agonise over what to wear every day, and it's usually super simple stuff. For travel, everything just fits on a carry-on - then there's no waiting around for luggage, it doesn't get lost on tight connections, and if you're getting out of the airport on a train or metro etc., it's just less of a hassle lugging it around (I have painful childhood memories of lugging bags up/down/around the subway/train in Tokyo).

I didn't think it was anything special - after all, if you like to (or have to) travel, you want to be on your way quickly and efficiently as possible, right? - but I realised I might have nerded out a bit more than usual when even frequent travellers started saying I was an efficient packer.

So, to spread the ultralight gospel further, I thought I'd share some of the travel essentials that help me pack light. (I could go on forever, I love nerding out on this stuff).

The Great American Eclipse - how we found the perfect spot to see the total solar eclipse 2017

Most of the travel I do is in search of food. However - and I may have mentioned this before - my husband is the very opposite of a foodie, so when we travel together, I throw all my expectations of food out the window. It helps that usually we're going somewhere super interesting, and this time it was to see the total eclipse.

The Great American Eclipse, as it was called, was indeed pretty great for the US, because it basically crossed the entire country, west to east, and it's rare for totality to be seen on land (as 70% of the earth is water, a lot of times total eclipses happen over the sea and it's hard to catch them), let alone a country that is so relatively accessible by roads.